The late Josefina Magno, MD, hero to terminally sick patients and their families

Josefina Magno, M.D., one of the founders of the hospice movement in the United States.

October 28, 2010

Tags: Suffering, Sickness, Opus Dei, Work, Women, US, supernumerary Probably the most renowned woman in Opus Dei in the United States was the late Josefina Magno, M.D., widely regarded as one of the founders of the hospice movement in the United States. Hospice care gives patients with terminal illnesses and their families the support they need to die comfortably and with dignity. In our day, Hospice care is widely available, but when Dr. Magno arrived in the United States in 1969, it was non-existent.

Dr. Magno devoted her life to making Hospice Care available for everyone in the United States, the Philippines and around the world. Dr. Magno's -personal struggle with cancer was what initially led her to spearhead the cause of helping people die with dignity. A brief overview of her life will shed light on the kind of person and professional she was.

Originally from the Philippines, Dr. Magno began her medical career in private practice in internal medicine. She later became involved in health and medical policy when she served as the Special Assistant to the Chairman of the National Science Development Board and then as the Assistant to the Secretary of Health, Philippine Government. She then moved to the United States in 1969. Prior to moving to the United States, her husband died of cancer eleven years after they were married, leaving her with seven children. She never remarried.

To cure cancer patients
Not long after moving to the United States Dr. Magno was diagnosed with breast cancer. After undergoing a radical mastectomy and other related cancer treatments, she decided to retrain as an oncologist at Georgetown University Medical Center. During her re-training, she observed doctors doing all they could to cure cancer patients. She saw that the accepted medical treatment - which often wasn’t a cure, but rather a prolongation of life frequently with very painful side effects - could bring unbearable suffering to patients.

This prompted her to ask her supervisor why treatment had to continue in the absence of hope. Dr. Magno said, His answer was classic: 'It’s easier to go on treating them than to say that there's nothing more that we can do. She realized something besides applying aggressive treatment protocols needed to be done for dying patients. Hence, her mission to develop the hospice movement in the United States and elsewhere began.

Dr. Magno helped implement and oversee hospice programs at a variety of hospitals and locations, including the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit and Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C. It was there that she developed the Georgetown University Pilot Project on Hospice Care with Blue Cross/Blue Shield. This project defined the role of insurance providers in the delivery of hospice care in the United States. The data resulting from this project ultimately led to reimbursement of hospice care by Medicare and private third-party carriers.

Dr. Magno founded and served on the board of directors of the Academy of Hospice Physicians. She was appointed the first executive director of the National Hospice Organization; during her tenure as executive director the number of hospice programs in the United States grew from one hundred to almost 1,500 programs located in every state in the country. She also served as the President of the International Hospice Institute for several years.

Why did she join Opus Dei?
Why did Dr. Magno - who clearly already had an extremely full, accomplished life and was well along in developing and spreading her hospice movement – join Opus Dei? In a letter written on May 18, 1992 to a Newsweek journalist, she describes what attracted her:

"I myself joined Opus Dei only very recently. I have been very much involved in a leadership role in the course Cursillo Movement both in my country, the Philippines and during my stay in Washington, DC from 1970 to 1984. I also was involved with the Charismatic Movement, both the Catholic University and at Georgetown University, so I felt that I was doing ‘Quite well’ in terms of my spiritual life.

I had heard about Opus Dei even before I left the Philippines in 1969. It was not until 1982 when I met friends who were in Opus Dei that I began to have a faint understanding of what Opus Dei is all about. It is simple: sanctification and apostolate. If I am a physician, this is the work that God gave to me and it is in being a physician that I can sanctify myself and sanctify my work. Thus, in my profession, I can find holiness and grow in my love for God. Because God had commanded all of us to ‘tell the whole world and bring the world to God,’ then the apostolate comes in. As I strive to be holy, I should try to help others come to know and love God also.

From my point of view as a physician, the concept appealed to me. This is the message that Monsignor Escriva had been preaching all of his life. Opus Dei is a call to sanctity in the world right where we all are. It is a vocation to holiness to the work that we are all involved in. He believed that with all his heart, and he kept urging everyone to achieve that with the help of the Blessed mother and St. Joseph.

A physician who is trying hard to be God's apostle
…What Monsignor Escriva accomplished for me is to simplify what the path to my personal sanctity is. I want to be holy and I want to love God with all my heart, and the vocation to Opus Dei helps me to try to do that….. I assure you that I am not a fanatic. I'm just a physician who is trying hard to be God's apostle. So that more people will come to know Him and to love Him. That is the mandate He has given to each one of us, isn’t it?"

Dr. Magno, who passed away in 2003, at the age of 83, did not work to create the U.S. Hospice Movement because of Opus Dei, rather Opus Dei provided her with different forms of spiritual encouragement and support to love God and souls as she worked at founding Hospice Care in the U.S. Opus Dei did not influence her in her work other than by providing her the spiritual, doctrinal and apostolic encouragement and help to carry that work out as a professional offering pleasing to God.

Most persons in Opus Dei, women or men, do not -- and probably will not -- have the expansive and tangible impact that Dr. Magno’s work has had, i.e. touching the lives of millions of dying patients and their families. Nevertheless, Opus Dei teaches and encourages women and men to strive to carry out the ordinary tasks in their work, social and family life with love, supernatural outlook, belief in the constant presence, interest and action of God in each person’s daily life, and human excellence each day. Further, Opus Dei’s programs help them come to understand that this way of living their life will have a positive, spiritual impact on all souls, especially those persons with whom they somehow have contact.

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